Possible Lions draft pick Ziggy Ansah speeding through learning curve

Apr. 11, 2013

Brigham Young defensive lineman Ziggy Ansah / Associated Press

Written by

Lindsay H. Jones

USA TODAY Sports

PROVO, Utah — The smiles and the stares were the most difficult thing to get used to.

Even now, nearly five years after moving to Utah from Accra, Ghana, Ezekiel "Ziggy" Ansah finds it odd that strangers will smile at him when they pass him on the street, in restaurants and in stores. As Ansah left a pizza place north of campus this spring, patrons dining at three different tables stopped him to say hello or wish him luck at pro day or with the NFL draft.

Ansah, Brigham Young's 6-6, 270 defensive end, knew none of them.

"It's all white people here. Provo is a nice place. People are always smiling at you," Ansah said. "It's like, 'What? I don't even know you!'"

The entirety of Ansah's American experience has been in Provo, and in just a few weeks everything is going to change. Ansah is projected to be a first-round pick in the NFL draft April 25, and with it will come a move to a new city, with new coaches and teammates and no built-in support system like he has enjoyed in college. At BYU, his coaches didn't curse. His teammates didn't party.

Ansah is a Mormon, baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at 18. BYU officials plan for church leaders in Ansah's new city to help ease his transition. Even as BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall, Ansah's team of agents and his former teammates in the NFL try to tell him about life as a professional athlete, Ansah still seems blissfully unaffected by his newfound fame as one of 2013's most intriguing prospects.

"You want to help him, because he's just so sincere, with this combination of naivety and a genuineness that is so contrary to college sports or even professional sports. You just want it to work," Mendenhall said. "Anyone who underestimates what he is capable of learning and how fast he can comprehend it and apply it, that would be a grave mistake."

Game-changer

This is nowhere near the life Ansah envisioned when he boarded a plane in Ghana headed for Utah in 2008. He had never seen a football game. If sports factored into his decision to move to the USA, it was only for the chance to try out for the basketball team. In his 19-year-old mind, Ansah thought he played basketball like LeBron James.

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BYU's basketball coaches didn't agree, and he was cut after trying out to be a walk-on in 2008 and 2009. He spent a season running track, the 100- and 200- meter sprints, and competing in the triple jump before his track coach walked him over to Mendenhall's office.

With his tall frame, long arms, flexible hips and broad shoulders, it's as if Ansah was built to play football. He possesses track speed in a massive body.

But he watched the sport as a fan only after enrolling at BYU and had only a vague understanding of the rules. At his first practice, after a six-week probationary period in which he proved to coaches he would attend weightlifting sessions and meetings, Ansah needed help putting on his shoulder pads. The helmet felt wrong on his head.

And then there were the drills. Instructed to get into a two-point stance to mimic blocking a tight end, Ansah squatted on all fours, his rear end sticking out behind him, his palms on the grass. When the defensive linemen moved into bag drills, Ansah didn't know how to position his hands. Sometimes he would whiff and the heavy blue bag would smack him on the face mask.

"I looked at it as a great challenge, because he had the ability, now we have to find out if he has that heart, that desire, that will. Can he take a hit? Or would he say, 'Hey this is not for me.' That was the next thing, to see if he would take the punishment," said Steve Kaufusi, BYU's defensive line coach. "You have to have patience.

"Here at BYU, it's not like every day you get an athlete like that that walks through your doors."

Breaking out

He began playing on special teams in 2010 and increased his role to nickel pass rusher in 2011. Ansah's breakthrough came during spring practices in 2012, just a year ago. During 11-on-11 drills that March, Ansah seemed to record some sort of statistic — a sack, a tackle for a loss, a forced fumble, a batted pass — in every series.

After one of those spring practices, Mendenhall casually approached Ansah in the locker room and told him he had earned a scholarship. For Ansah, who had worked various jobs around campus to pay for his actuarial science and math classes, it was life-changing news. He could spend the summer studying and training, not working as a custodian and on the grounds crew.

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"That alone was one of the coolest moments I've ever been able to do," Mendenhall said.

Ansah wasn't a starter at the beginning of his senior season. He was just a situational pass rusher, still learning the techniques to be an all-around defensive lineman and still adjusting to the rigors of football practices and games.

After he would get singled out by Mendenhall in practices, he would ask teammates why he was being pushed so hard. The answer would always be the same: Because Mendenhall and the rest of the coaches saw unlimited potential.

The Cougars lost two defensive line starters in the first month of the season, and early in the fourth game BYU had no choice but to turn Ansah into an every-down player, starting with a goal-line series against Boise State in which he made two tackles. Later, for the first time, he stayed on the field for the duration of a 10-play defensive series.

"When he put it all together last season, it was like, 'All right, you have a chance to be really, really good,' and that's what's happened," BYU outside linebacker Kyle Van Noy said. "It's just crazy much he's picked up the game and how much of an impact he had for us last year."

Ansah finished his senior season with 41/2 sacks and 13 tackles for a losses — modest numbers but not indicative of the progress he made or the effect he had on BYU's defense as he lined up as a traditional defensive end, slid inside to tackle and also at times rushed from a stand-up linebacker position.

"When he comes up on that stage on draft day, I hope he knows that anything I did in driving him, probably more than anybody else, it was because of who I thought he could become," Mendenhall said.

His relatives back home in Ghana — mother Betty, father Edward and four older siblings — have yet to see him play. He has seen his mother and one sister once since enrolling at BYU but is looking forward to as much of his family as possible traveling to New York for the draft.

There, he will introduce them to his new life, the one he never could have imagined just a few months ago, one he hopes will be able to change not just himself but his entire family.

"I have just got to live right," Ansah said. "I want to return with honor, you know?"